Features in Specific VMware Releases VMware vSockets communicate between the host and a guest on VMware platform products. You could also use vSockets for interprocess communications on a guest. You cannot use vSockets between the host and a virtual machine running on a different host. Important To use vSockets, virtual machines must be upgraded to VMware compatibility 7 (virtual hardware version 7), which was introduced in VMware Workstation 6.5 and supported in ESX/ESXi 4.0. As of VMware Server 2.0 RC2 and Workstation 6.5 RC releases, you can set the minimum, maximum, and default size of communicating stream buffers. See Set and Get Socket Options. ESX/ESXi 4.x (vSphere 4) releases and later have complete user-level support for vSockets. Datagram and stream sockets are supported between host and guests on both Linux and Windows. In the Workstation 7.x releases running on Windows hosts, only datagram sockets were supported. In the ESXi 5.0 and Workstation 8.0 releases, it was announced that the guest to guest vSockets feature would be discontinued. As of the ESXi 5.1 release, only host to guest vSockets are allowed.